craftsman snowblower fire

fhapMarch 18, 2008

I was unaware of the recall, until I had a fire, then I checked the internet, I wish I had done this before I purchased this snowblower, although this mach starts well and blows snow, the handle height is not good and I'm 5'10", it seemed to stop running if too much snow got on the mach, the day it burned it had stopped, I cleaned it off and restarted it, it immediately caught on fire, I went into the house to get something to put the fire out, looked back out and the fire was about 4 feet high, called 911, went back out, my neighbor from 150 yards away was now out there, wondering what I was cooking at 5:30 in the morning, we smothered the fire with snow. Off to work I go,

that I check the internet, find there may be a recall , find a number and call what seems to be India or someone that is very hard to understand, finally get a number from him to call, now we have 2 people that speak the same english, yes my machine is on the call, some one wiil be out to check the mach in about 3 weeks. Good thing I kept my shovel. I have a 8 hour window, will the service man call if he's not coming or will I have to find another # to call. From this day forward I'll always check the internet before purchasing anything that's this expensive.

I've had the mach 3 years, the first month the discharge chute broke, they would not send me a new one I had to bring the mach back to the store, they sent it back to Mass to be fixed, the second year the z clip for the throttle broke, I used picture wire in place of the orig cable, the brush holder also broke the first year, this year I had to replace the chute again, I also replaced the throttle cable, 2 storms later the mach burns ..

If you don't want the same machine with a different name I would look up as see which brand names are made by the same company that sears sells, probably MTD or AYP if I had to guess. They make alot of different brand that they have contracts with or brought out. IMO I suspect Sears will probably going to try to weasel out and say operator fault or error after three years, but I guessing again.